[Rob_K]

Very interesting thread DJ, and you are to be congratulated! My answers are:

1. No
2. See below
3. N/A
4. No.

Like most recreational astronomers though, I am on my own personal journey of understanding the science of the Universe through my hobby. But this is not practising science by any measure.

I am in absolute awe of what amateurs are contributing to the scientific field. On IIS, we see people such as cometman discovering new comets, your own work in the asteroid belt, others recording grazing and other occultations, planetary imagers contributing to research programs, some searching for supernovae, etc. But I think we need to examine what this contribution is. Is it science? Scientific method may be rigorously followed, but ultimately I think you are data collectors – technicians. Science is about mechanics, about understanding processes. So your data becomes the raw material for science to interpret and shape our understanding of the cosmos. Discovering objects – comets, supernovae, asteroid moons etc – is no more science than ‘twitching’ is ornithology.

This is not meant to demean the enormous discipline, dedication, knowledge and skill involved in amateur data collection, or its value to science. Even in the professional field, data collection from the major world observatories is largely undertaken by technicians (admittedly through much more automated means than those available to amateurs!) and then distributed to a range of professionals for analysis. This is where the science is.

It would be easy to be dismissive and say what on earth can our puny dobs, SCTs, SDMs etc do to add significant information to that gained by orbiting NASA & other satellite probes, or to roll back the universe like the massive earth or space-based telescopes. But the simple answer is that the big eyes can’t be everywhere at once, observatory time is at a premium, and amateur scopes are bigger than they used to be (except mine! ) & more numerous. The amateur input is marginal I'd suggest though, and wouldn't form any sort of significant percentage of the data used in astronomy science - correct me if I'm wrong.

However I feel that the limiting factor in amateur participation in 'real' astronomy science is a basic one. The people who do the science have done the hard yards – degrees (masters/doctorates), followed by years of work & training in research facilities, in highly specialised fields. In other words, we just don’t have the tools to do it. No reason we can’t put our two bob’s worth in though, but however much we want to dress it up as science, its basis can’t be any more than speculative or intuitive, unless we do the hard yards too.

Hope I haven’t offended anyone!

Cheers -